Wednesday, August 24, 2016

RIP Mario Novelli

The GuardianSeptember 11, 2016Mario Novelli, the actor, who has died aged 76, was, with his high
cheekbones and sulphurous eyes, one of the finest bad guys in spaghetti
Westerns.

He made nearly 70 films, mostly under the name of Anthony Freeman,
cutting his teeth on sword-and-sandal epics and later enjoying a second
career as a stuntman.

Mario Novelli was born in Rome on February 26 1940. Aged 19 he found
himself in Spain, where a friend suggested he try stunt work, and he
was encouraged to act by the producer Vincenzo Musolino. “He felt I had
something aside from beefcake,” Novelli recalled.

Beefcake, however, was very much on the menu. In 1962 Novelli was an
uncredited nobleman in the epic Fury of Achilles, then played a
succession of gladiators in The Rebel Gladiators (1962), Seven Slaves
Against Rome (1964) and The Revenge of Spartacus (1965).

His first substantial role, credited as Tony Freeman and modelled on
a better-known Italian heart-throb, Kirk Morris (aka Adriano Bellini),
came in The Invincible Brothers Maciste (also 1964), the last notable
“sword-and-sandaller” (they were also known as “peplum” pictures,
referring to the ubiquitous tunics).

Although reviews were generally less than favourable, Novelli was
stripped to the waist for most of his screen time and accordingly built
up a sizeable female following, as well as being linked to some of
Italy’s most desirable women.

“We were called upon to flex our muscles for those peplum pictures,”
he recalled. “Quite often we were required to simply look beautiful,
either with chests waxed or chest hair tonged under hair dryers. Looks
were everything.”

He did not disappoint his female fans in Three Swords for Rome
(1966) notable for its impressive sets and wardrobe – mostly borrowed
from other films.

“You’d get into a sweat-stained toga fresh from some other guy and be expected to just carry on,” Novelli said.

Tweaking his stage name to Anthony Freeman (the “h” was occasionally
dropped), he made his first foray into spaghetti westerns as a bounty
hunter in Texas, Adios (1966), starring Franco Nero, a loose sequel to
Sergio Corbucci’s masterpiece of the genre, Django. The same year came a
piece of alien-abduction hokum called Star Pilot, which had unfortunate
shades of the low-budget “shlock” of Ed Wood, as Novelli battled
ape-like Martians in moth-eaten fur coats who take to the skies on
trampolines.

He won some of his best reviews for his role as one of two
bank-robber brothers in the underrated Ballad of a Gunman (1967), which
drew on Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More, and was also praised for
his role in a gripping German film, A Big Grey-Blue Bird (1969), part
sci-fi, part political thriller.

He returned to spaghetti westerns in Dead Men Ride and Kill Django…
Kill First (both 1971) and A Gunman Called Dakota (1972). He worked with
Rainer Werner Fassbinder on Beware of a Holy Whore (1971), which
depicted an egomaniac director ganged-up on by cast and crew.

The much-praised crime thriller, Violent City (1975), and Like Rabid
Dogs (1976) paved the way for Freeman’s involvement in poliziotteschi
films, an Italian genre that influenced vigilante movies such as Death
Wish. He also played a gunman in a 1979 episode of Return of the Saint.

He worked prolifically into the 1990s. As a stuntman and stunt
co-ordinator, his credits included Delta Force Commando (1988), the
Satanic horror film Beyond the Door III (1989), and John Frankenheimer’s
thriller Year of the Gun (1991), starring Sharon Stone. Later work
included Exorcist: The Beginning (2004), and Michael Winterbottom’s The
Face of an Angel (2014), starring Kate Beckinsale.

He is survived by his two sons, both of whom followed in his footsteps, as stuntmen.

About Me

Born in Toledo, Ohio in 1946 I have a BA degree in American History from Cal St. Northridge. I've been researching the American West and western films since the early 1980s and visiting filming sites in Spain and the U.S.A. Elected a member of the Spaghetti Western Hall of Fame 2010.